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One writer’s travails

Left Coast Crime is an annual conference that moves around the left coast, generally of the US. This year LCC was in Honolulu. Like the other moveable crime conferences, location is a prime consideration, since fans and readers use this as a holiday as well as a chance to meet their favorite writers. So, the attraction of a place like this.

However, I was also this year’s Toastmaster, which meant it wasn’t all lolling on the beach with a Mai Tai in hand. Instead, this was what my conference looked like—Thursday on the bottom, Friday next line up, then Saturday, and Sunday on the chair off the edge of the table.

Plus that, I received the proof pages of Lockdown just before I left, with a deadline of the day I returned home. Sigh. But all in all, it was a blast. I got to exhort the assembled conference to let down their hair

and I got to see some of my favorite Friends of Russell

and when I had to work in my room, I was forced to look up from my read-aloud task at this:

and this (yes, that’s a pirate ship)

And although I didn’t finish my proofs until after the conference was over (though I was still in Hawaii, with my own personal bug-zapper)

I was honored that the hotel put on a slightly premature congratulatory fireworks display

on Saturday. All in all, Left Coast Crime in Hawaii was pretty cool. Reno, you have a lot to live up to.

Comments

It was a wonderful conference and you were a delightful Toastmistress. I am still grieving the fact that I wasn’t there to see the great “And then she took down her hair!” moment, but hoisting a pina colada with you was fun, too. Looking forward to Bouchercon!